Former Department of Health and Hospitals (DHH) Secretary Bruce Greenstein has been indicted by the Louisiana Attorney General’s Office on nine counts of perjury stemming from a lengthy investigation of his involvement in the awarding of a $183 million contract to a company for which he once worked.

Greenstein is accused in four counts of lying under oath to the Senate and Governmental Affairs Committee during his confirmation hearings of June 8 and June 17, 2011 and five counts of lying to an East Baton Rouge Parish Grand Jury on June 3 of this year.

Greenstein was appointed head of DHH in September of 2010 and was terminated by the governor’s office on May 1, 2013 when it was learned that the FBI had begun an investigation of the state’s contract with Client Network Services, Inc. (CNSI) as far back as January, 2013 when records of the state’s contract with the company were subpoenaed.

When the FBI probe became known in late March, Jindal immediately cancelled the CNSI contract and Greenstein announced his “resignation” a short time later, though he was allowed to remain on the job until May 1.

The indictment that came down on Tuesday (Sept. 23) is the first time that it was revealed that Greenstein did not resign, but was terminated and apparently allowed to announced that he had resigned.

There was no immediate word of the status of the federal investigation of CNSI and Greenstein but legal observers said Tuesday that pressure will most likely be applied to Greenstein to cooperate with the investigation.

Assistant Attorney General David Caldwell said that while the indictment is for perjury, “it really stems from the entirety of the activity in the awarding of this contract” and the grand jury will remain empaneled to do additional work on the case.

At his confirmation hearings, Greenstein first refused to tell legislators who had won the contract to provide Medicaid billing services for the state but under unrelenting pressure and scolding from legislators, as well as threats of his not being confirmed, he finally admitted that CNSI, his old employer from Washington State, was awarded the contract.

Greenstein, however, insisted that he had built a “firewall” between himself and the selection process and had not intervened in the deliberations, nor had he had any contact with CNSI officials.

It was subsequently learned from emails and text messages subpoenaed by the committee that he had had thousands of text messages and hundreds of phone calls from CNSI officials during the bidding and selection processes.

It was also learned that Greenstein had learned that CNSI was initially not qualified to bid on the contract and that he had added addendums to the bid requirements that made the company eligible.

Counts 1and 2 of the indictment cited his testimony under oath in a response to a question from Sen. Rob Marionneaux that he did not know if CNSI was unqualified under the original request for proposals and became eligible only after the addendum was added to the bid specifications.

Counts 3 and 4 involved his responses to Sen. Karen Carter Peterson about his emails to and from CNSI founder Adnan Ahmed relative to the addendum that made CNSI bid eligible.

The remaining five counts, all for lying to the grand jury, involved charges that he lied about email communications with CNSI, about a directive to DHH personnel forbidding contact with bidders and whether or not the directive applied to Greenstein himself, about his false testimony regarding legal advice he said he received from DHH staff attorney Stephen Russo, and his false testimony regarding his confrontation with DHH and administration officials prior to his June 17 Senate testimony and their efforts to learn the truth about his contacts with CNSI.

Interestingly, none of the counts was for bid-rigging or public corruption, leaving observers to speculate while waiting to see what other charges might be forthcoming as the grand jury continues its investigation.

Of course, he has not been convicted of any of the charges as yet but if prosecutors are able to flip Greenstein, things are going to get pretty interesting around the State Capitol and in Washington State in the coming weeks and months.

And it’s not very likely that he will take the full brunt of the charges if he has committed any wrongdoing. That is, if he can implicate others further up the line.

16 Responses

One has to wonder if the feds are lurking somewhere in the background given the implications of the perjury charges. Since they tend to cast a wide net, many people walking the halls of state government and CNSI might be suffering sleep disorders.

That’s what I was wondering about too Stephen. He was indicted by the state but I too wonder if the Feds are still looking at things. If they (the Feds) do somehow get involved, look for Jindal to somehow blame it on Obama and then tie it in to Common Core. 😉

With all the shenanigans of the Jindal administration, it’s hard for me to believe that nothing illegal took place, and the governor was completely out of the loop. He’s certainly run roughshod over Louisiana law and had to pull back several times when his policies were declared unconstitutional.

Of course, there must be proof of illegal activity (innocent until proven guilty), and justice must take its sometimes slow course, but if I were Kristy Nichols or anyone in Jindal’s inner circle, I’d be a bit worried. If I were Kathy Kliebert, I’d be worried. Since Jindal doesn’t brook disagreement, would he even pay attention to legal advice that was not to his liking?

There is no difference (besides the amt. of the bid) between Greenstein’s involvement w/ bid rigging of the CNSI contract and Representative Broadwater’s bid rigging with the fraud contract he awarded to SAS as director of the OWC. In 2010, he left his job 2 weeks after SAS signed a retroactive, $4.28 million dollar contract with the state, so basically, Broadwater was an employee while the SAS contract was active and within two weeks of signing the contract, Broadwater is listed as a consultant on SAS proposals to other states. Tom has previously reported on this and I have a relative that is an employee of the OWC. https://louisianavoice.com/2013/07/10/vice-chair-of-house-labor-committee-represents-insurance-clients-before-office-of-workers-comp-that-he-once-headed/
Many folks at the OWC, including the current director, if forced to be truthful, and because of his involvement would have to be coerced, can attest to the fact that Broadwater was very much in touch with a key employee of SAS, Dan Smilie, for months prior to a competitive bid being published and he even reached out to Tim Barfield, who was Jindal’s legal advisor at the time, for help with the “specifics of the bid” because apparently, he was encountering difficulty with getting language included that would leverage the bid to SAS.

SAS ends up with the “fraud” portion of the CNSI contract under very suspicious circumstances, and if I’m not mistaken, after the bid was already awarded to Thomson Reuters and there are OTHER bids that although awarded to another company, mysteriously ends up with SAS as the contractor.
Why isn’t the FBI looking into the commonality of these two issues as Broadwater is constantly expanding SAS’ role in state government. Not only with his program to utilize collection agencies for state debts, but, If you will recall, he would like SAS to collect data on every LA citizen so he can “intervene” in our lives and prevent us from “going of course” and committing a crime. I’m curious if this prevention of crime applies to white collar crimes committed regularly by him and others under this administration. Perhaps if the system was in place, a red light would have gone off in Boobie’s mansion warning him that Broadwater and Greenstein were about to engage in activity that would make Edwin Edwards blush like a school girl.

Pressure on Greenstein could very well reveal a few things. HELLO, FBI, anyone home. Tom, I think the song, Send in the Clowns is very appropriate here!

Well, another thousands reasons Jindal does not like the Federal Government, they are paying attention and yes, they are the enemy to the GOP Jindalite revolution to privatize government and run it like a business, that is, let the market decides who gets our taxpayer money, and to hell with the law and regulations. ron thompson

In Louisiana the Governor is purely the face of evil. Piyush “Bobby” Jindal has ruined the state’s economy by giving increasing tax breaks to the very wealthy few under the pretext that they will take the money and create jobs. This has never happened here or anywhere else but that is not his real reason. He wants to be in the White House and this is a way of buying support from the rich at the expense of everyone else. Hospitals, schools, colleges and social programs are all suffering as never before. He has created a misery across this state that may not have a historical equal. This is not just bad politics, it’s evil, E-V-I-L.

The bible says, “He who oppresses the poor to increase his riches, And he who gives to the rich, will surely come to poverty.” Proverbs 22:16. This is a pure and accurate description of the man Piyush “Bobby” Jindal.

Evil is coming at us from all sides. It’s really time for us to decide what we will DO to save ourselves. Next time let’s talk about how we’re going to win this war. The Calvary ain’t coming……and that’s the Hard Truth.

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